FRONTIERS OF ZOOLOGYDale A. Drinnon has been a researcher in the field of Cryptozoology for the past 30+ years and has corresponded with Bernard Heuvelmans and Ivan T. Sanderson. He has a degree in Anthropology from Indiana University and is a freelance artist and writer. Motto: "I would rather be right and entirely alone than wrong in the company with all the rest of the world"--Ambroise Pare', "the father of modern surgery", in his refutation of fake unicorn horns.

Tuesday, 28 August 2012

More on Burus, Druks and such

Buru (cryptozoology)

The Buru was an aquatic reptile said to have lived in
Jiro (also spelled and pronounced as Ziro) valley, a small town in the state of
Arunachal
Pradesh, India, at some
undefined time in the past. In 1947, Professor Christopher
von Furer-Haimendorf was the first westerner to be told about the Buru. By
that time, the animals had reportedly already become extinct in the valley.
According to the Apatani elders, when their
forefathers migrated to Jiro valley, the valley was primarily a marsh which was populated by Burus.
The Apatani people
decided to settle in the valley because of its fertility and good climate. But
every now and then they would have confrontations with burus. So they decided to
drain the marsh of its water and thus eliminate the Burus. Most of the Burus
died because of the drainage, and many supposedly went underground into the
springs.
The last Buru was said to be reported by a young woman, who sighted it in a
spring one night while she was drawing water. The startled lady told her father
about the incident. The next day the whole village helped fill the spring with
stones and clay.

Identity

Traditionally, there has been speculation that the Buru was an unidentified
member of the order crocodilia. Tellingly,
crocodiles or alligators are also called "Buru" by the Apatanis. There is large
population of crocodiles which live in caves in North Africa, quite far from
open water, so an underground existence is not improbable for persecuted Indian
crocodiles.
The mere fact that crocodilians are called "Buru" may not however be very
significant, since the Buru is described with monitor-like characteristics such
as an elongated neck and a forked tongue. The native name of the Komodo dragon is "Land
Crocodile". Both Bernard
Heuvelmans.[1] and Roy Mackal regard the Buru to
be a large Komodo dragon-like monitor lizard, and there are fossils of such a
creature to be found in the Indian subcontinent. Heuvelmans notes similar
reported creatures from Western India under the name of "jhoors" where they seem
to merge into the Iranian traditional dragon or ahi (Azi Dahaka), which in Iranian
art is basically a local stylistic adaptation of the Chinese dragon. George
Eberhart notes rumors of a similar creature in the Tigris marshes of Iraq,
called the afa, possibly the same thing as ahi. Heuvelmans also notes in his
checklist of unknown animals that similar reports to the buru also come from
Burma, and they might also relate to a reported lizardlike Meikong River
monster.
Cryptozoologist Karl
Shuker claims that the Buru was a giant lungfish stating that this
provides a far more comprehensive, comparable match not only in terms of
morphology but also with regard to behaviour. Shuker believes this explains the
Buru's alleged ability to survive hidden at the bottom of lakes during the dry
season.[2] Shuker's view admittedly does nothing to
account for the various other buru-like creatures as cited in this article. It
also does not account for the specified features of the long neck and forked
tongue.

Heuvelmans in his Checklist entry on the Buru specified it was identical to the dragon represented on the flag of Buthan. This dragon is known as the Druk.(most likely linguistically related to Dragon)

"Amphibious animals, probably huge monitor lizards, some up to 20 feet in
length-- and thus larger than the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis)--
currently reported in India and neighboring countries. In the Gir area
(Kathiawar Penninsula), where they are called jhoor, they are largely
mythicized, but they have been fairly well observed in the Sundabarans (mouths
of the Ganges), where, strangely enough, they live in symbiosis with the
Saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)

In Assam, where they are known as the Buru to the Apa Thanis,seem to have been exterminated in modern times (Izzard 1951, Mackal 1980), in Buthan, however, some have been sin one of the Northern lakes and once even by the king himself (referring to an issue of National Geographic but not cited by Heuvelmans) they have also been reported in Burma (as the Bu-Rin, again not cirted by Heuvelmans directly). There is even a historical reference extantof their existance in Sumatra in the 16th Century (Heuvelmans 1965)"

What is stiking to me at this point is the large size, up to 20 feet long,
and the part about the symbiosis with C. porosus. Both of those things are in
contrast with the Buru on the one hand and the other purported giany monitors on
the other.

At this point in time, what I propose now is this:

There is a true Crocodile monitor seen in New Guinea often confused with
the Tree crocodile monitor but at approximately double the length. It is
amphibious, at home on land and in the water, and can tolerate both saltwater
and freshwater. It has evolved some sort of a symbiosis with C. porosus. It
therefore (my inference) is possibly found throughout the same range as C.
porosus. (This is the "Aha!" part) Therefore the larger creature found at the
Sundabarans, in the Andaman Islands and down to Sumatra, and in other places, is
the same as the Guanjan or snake-crocodile in New Guinea and Melanesia and the
Ngarara of Fiji-to-New Zealand, probably in its occasional and not its regular
range. It is not the Buru, it is much longer and especially has a much longer
tail. It possibly ranged as far as the Persian Gulf at one time, as C. porosus
seems to have done.

It s still my feeling that the Buru is another giant monitor and especially
since its description and measurements match exactly those given for "Dragons"
in Burma, the Meikong and Southern China (probably as far as Taiwan, but the
ones in the Phillipines seem to match the ones in New Zealand instead. More
information on this score would be very helpful!)

At present, officially the Sea-crocodile lizard has been assumed to be the
same as the New Guinean Tree-crocodile lizard or Atrellia. Provisionally, the species could
be referred to as Varanus cf-salvadorii. Hopefully, somebody with access to
museum specimens might be able to come up with already-collected specimens. The
length of 20 feet at least matches Roman-era reports of Dragons in India.

Hope this helps. Best Wishes, Dale D.

The following two photos of Komodo dragons were used to illutrate different internet articles on these South-Asian dragons, including reports from Southern China. While they are are not in themselves authoritative representations of such creatures directly, they do indicate what people think they are talking about.These creatures are always generally given the same size and body shape with four legs, usually stating ith separate clawed digits, a long tail and a scaly fat body with a distinct longer neck to the front of it. The fact that most of the descriptions match as far as body shape goes is significant: Exceptions contrary to the general run of the reports are recorded for Burus but are noted to come from an interview with a single esteemed member of society but unfortunately somebody with whom there was a very difficult language barrier. This same individual stated that the teeth were like a wild boar's teeth, the young were born in wayter, and that the legs were like "Flanges" on the side of the body. ALL of these statements must be viewed with suspicion and this was noted in Izzard's initial reports.

Buru
Unknown Lizard of Central Asia.
Etymology: Apatani and Nisi (Sino-Tibetan)
word, possibly from its call.
Physical description: Roundish, elongated
body. Length, 11–14 feet. Mottled blue-black
above. Broad white band on the underside.
Head, 20 inches. One account gives it three
plates on the head, one on the top and on each
side. Eyes are close behind a flat-tipped snout.
Flat teeth, except for a single pair of large,
pointed teeth in both the upper and lower jaws.
Forked tongue. Neck, 3 feet. Three lines of
short spines run down its back and sides. Back,
18 inches wide. One account said it has legs 20
inches long with clawed feet, while another only
gave it paired lateral flanges. Round, tapering
tail 3–5 feet long and fringed at the base.
Behavior: Completely aquatic. Raises its head
out of the water occasionally. Basks in the sun
on the bank in the summer. Remains in the
mud when the swamps dry up. Makes a hoarse,
bellowing noise. Does not eat fishes. Young are
born alive in the water. Can grab a man with its
tail and drag him underwater.
Distribution:Swamps and lakes near Ziro in the
Apatani Valley, Arunachal Pradesh Union Terri-
tory, India; 50 miles to the southwest in the Dafla
hills, Arunachal Pradesh Union Territory, India.
Significant sightings:In 1945 and 1946, James
Phillip Mills and Charles Stonor collected de-
scriptions of the Buru from the Apatani people,
who are said to have killed the last of them in
their area when they were draining swamps for
rice cultivation.
In 1948, Ralph Izzard and Charles Stonor vis-
ited a swamp in the Dafla hills near Chemgeng in
the hopes of finding a living Buru but returned
with conflicting stories from the Nisi people.
Present status: It may still be possible to find
skeletal remains of the animals in the Apatani
Valley, since the precise kill spots are still known.
Possible explanations:
(1) A surviving dinosaur of some type, sug-
gested by Ralph Izzard.
(2) An unknown species of Monitor lizard
(Varanus sp.), suggested by Roy Mackal.
(3) An unknown species of Crocodile (Order
Crocodylia), suggested by Tim Dinsdale.
(4) A large, swamp-dwelling Lungfish
(Order Lepidosireniformes) would explain
the Buru’s ability to keep submerged in
mud, according to Karl Shuker. The body
structure also matches a lungfish more than
a reptile. Its bellow might be caused by its
ventilating air.
(5) An unknown species of Bonytongue fish
similar to the Pirarucu (Arapaima gigas) of
South America, which also has an air blad-
der fashioned into a lung.
Sources: Christopher von Fürer-Haimendorf,
“The Valley of the Unknown,” Illustrated
London News 121 (November 8, 1947):
526–530; Ralph Izzard,The Hunt for the Buru
(London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1951);
Desmond Doig, “Bhutan,” National
Geographic 120 (September 1961): 384,
391–392; Tim Dinsdale,The Leviathans
(London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966),
pp. 105–110; Roy P. Mackal, Searching for
Hidden Animals (Garden City, N.Y.:
Doubleday, 1980), pp. 79–98; Karl Shuker,
Extraordinary Animals Worldwide (London:
Robert Hale, 1991), pp. 54–61. [Karl Shuker's assertions that the estivation indicates a lungfish better than a crocodile or lizard is incorrect: both crocodiles and lizards are known to hibernate in the winter and estivate in the summer, and the lungfishes most like his model for the Buru live in permanent pools so they do not estivate. Furthermotre his assertion that a lungfish fits the description of the body shape better is simply false. The described body shape specifies a long flexible neck which the lungfish would never have.-DD]

Wuhan, lake near, Hubei Province. In 1987, a
group of biologists led by Chen Mok Chun re-
ported seeing three large, grayish-white, toadlike an-
imals with mouths 6 feet wide and huge eyes swim-
ming toward them. One of the creatures extended
an enormous tongue that grabbed their tripod-
mounted cameras. Karl Shuker, “Lesser-Known
Lake Monsters,” Fate43 (September 1990): 75–86.[This is badly exaggerated but the creatures are short-snouted crocodilelike animals with protrusable tongues. The descriptions match a type of giant monitor lizard better than anything else. The sizes are badly exaggerated but only the width of the mouth is specifically given a measure-DD]

This blog does NOT allow anonymous comments. All comments are moderated to filter out abusive and vulgar language and any posts indulging in abusive and insulting language shall be deleted without any further discussion.

Popular Posts

In order to be fair and have more choices, there are now two Popular Posts lists: the first one is for the last 30 days and the second one is for all-time favorites. Some posts may appear on both lists temporarily.

Associated Sites

Disclaimer

In Accordance with Title 17 USC Section 107, any copyright material on display here is under Fair Use without any claim of ownership or any profit accrued by the display. The Material herein is for non-profit educational or criticism puposes only. Notwithstanding the provisions of Sections 106 and 106a, the fair use of a copyrighted work including reproduction and distribution of said material as specified in that section, for purposes of education, news reporting, commentary or criticism, scholarship or research, to persons who have expressed a prior interest in receiving such material for such purposes, is NOT an infringement.